An Apache Princess - Charles King (readict books .TXT) 📗
- Author: Charles King
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That night, after being fed and comforted until even an Indian could eat no more, the messenger, a young Apache Mohave, wanted papel to go to the agency, but Plume had other plans. "Take him down to Shaughnessy's," said he to Truman, "and see if he knows that girl." So take him they did, and at sight of his swarthy face the girl had given a low cry of sudden, eager joy; then, as though reading warning in his glance, turned her face away and would not talk. It was the play of almost every Apache to understand no English whatever, yet Truman could have sworn she understood when he asked her if she could guess where Angela was in hiding. The Indian lad had shaken his head and declared he knew nothing. The girl was dumb. Mrs. Bridger happened in a moment later, coming down with Mrs. Sanders to see how the strange patient was progressing. They stood in silence a moment, listening to Truman's murmured words. Then Mrs. Bridger suddenly spoke. "Ask her if she knows Natzie's cave," said she. "Natzie's cave," she repeated, with emphasis, and the Indian girl guilelessly shook her head, and then turned and covered her face with her hands.
CHAPTER XXIII AN APACHE QUEENn the slant of the evening sunshine a young girl, an Indian, was crouching among the bare rocks at the edge of a steep and rugged descent. One tawny little hand, shapely in spite of scratches, was uplifted to her brows, shading her keen and restless eyes against the glare. In the other hand, the right, she held a little, circular pocket-mirror, cased in brass, and held it well down in the shade. Only the tangle of her thick, black hair and the top of her head could be seen from the westward side. Her slim young body was clothed in a dark-blue, well-made garment, half sack, half skirt, with long, loose trousers of the same material. There was fanciful embroidery of bead and thread about the throat. There was something un-Indian about the cut and fashion of the garments that suggested civilized and feminine supervision. The very way she wore her hair, parted and rolling back, instead of tumbling in thick, barbaric "bang" into her eyes, spoke of other than savage teaching; and the dainty make of her moccasins; the soft, pliant folds of the leggins that fell, Apache fashion, about her ankles, all told, with their beadwork and finish, that this was no unsought girl of the tribespeople. Even the sudden gesture with which, never looking back, she cautioned some follower to keep down, spoke significantly of rank and authority. It was a chief's daughter that knelt peering intently over the ledge of rocks toward the black shadows of the opposite slope. It was Natzie, child of a warrior leader revered among his people, though no longer spared to guide them—Natzie, who eagerly, anxiously searched the length of the dark gorge for sign or signal, and warned her companion to come no further.
Over the gloomy depths, a mile away about a jutting point, three or four buzzards were slowly circling, disturbed, yet determined. Over the broad valley that extended for miles toward the westward range of heights, the mantle of twilight was slowly creeping, as in his expressive sign language the Indian spreads his extended hands, palms down, drawing and smoothing imaginary blanket, the robe of night, over the face of nature. Far to the northward, from some point along the face of the heights, a fringe of smoke was drifting in the soft breeze sweeping down the valley from the farther Sierras. Wild, untrodden, undesired of man, the wilderness lay outspread—miles and miles of gloom and desolation, save where some lofty scarp of glistening rock, jutting from among the scattered growth of dark-hued pine and cedar, caught the brilliant rays of the declining sun.
Behind the spot where Natzie knelt, the general slope was broken by a narrow ledge or platform, bowlder-strewn—from which, almost vertically, rose the rocky scarp again. Among the sturdy, stunted fir trees, bearding the rugged face, frowned a deep fissure, dark as a wolf den, and, just in front of it, wide-eyed, open-mouthed, crouched Lola—Natzie's shadow. Rarely in reservation days, until after Blakely came as agent, were they ever seen apart, and now, in these days of exile and alarm, they were not divided. Under a spreading cedar, close to the opening, a tiny fire glowed in a crevice of the rocks, sending forth no betraying smoke. About it were some rude utensils, a pot or two, a skillet, an earthen olla, big enough to hold perhaps three gallons, two bowls of woven grass, close plaited, almost, as the famous fiber of Panama. In one of these was heaped a store of piñons, in the other a handful or two of wild plums. Sign of civilization, except a battered tin teapot, there was none, yet presently was there heard a sound that told of Anglo-Saxon presence—the soft voice of a girl in low-toned, sweet-worded song—song so murmurous it might have been inaudible save in the intense stillness of that almost breathless evening—song so low that the Indian girl, intent in her watch at the edge of the cliff, seemed not to hear at all. It was Lola who heard and turned impatiently, a black frown in her snapping eyes, and a lithe young Indian lad, hitherto unseen, dropped noiselessly from a perch somewhere above them and, filling a gourd at the olla, bent and disappeared in the narrow crevice back of the curtain of firs. The low song ceased gradually, softly, as a mother ceases her crooning lullaby, lest the very lack of the love-notes stir the drowsing baby brain to sudden waking.
With the last words barely whispered the low voice died away. The Indian lad came forth into the light again, empty-handed; plucked at Lola's gown, pointed to Natzie, for the moment forgotten, now urgently beckoning. Bending low, they ran to her. She was pointing across the deep gorge that opened a way to the southward. Something far down toward its yawning mouth had caught her eager eye, and grasping the arm of the lad with fingers that twitched and burned, she whispered in the Apache tongue:
"They're coming."
One long look the boy gave in the direction pointed, then, backing away from the edge, he quickly swept away a Navajo blanket that hung from the protruding branches of a low cedar, letting the broad light into the cavelike space beyond. There, on a hard couch of rock, skin, and blanket, lay a fevered form in rough scouting dress. There, with pinched cheeks, and eyes that heavily opened, dull and suffused, lay the soldier officer who had ridden forth to rescue and to save, himself now a crippled and helpless captive. Beside him, wringing out a wet handkerchief and spreading it on the burning forehead, knelt Angela. The girls who faced each other for the first time at the pool—the daughter of the Scotch-American captain—the daughter of the Apache Mohave chief—were again brought into strange companionship over the unconscious form of the soldier Blakely.
Resentful of the sudden glare that caused her patient to shrink and toss complainingly, Angela glanced up almost in rebuke, but was stilled by the look and attitude of the young savage. He stood with forefinger on his closed lips, bending excitedly toward her. He was cautioning her to make no sound, even while his very coming brought disturbance to her first thought—her fevered patient. Then, seeing both rebuke and question in her big, troubled eyes, the young Indian removed his finger and spoke two words: "Patchie come," and, rising, she followed him out to the flat in front.
Natzie at the moment was still crouching close to the edge, gazing intently over, one little brown hand nervously grasping the branch of a stunted cedar, the other as nervously clutching the mirror. So utterly absorbed was she that the hiss of warning, or perhaps of hatred, with which Lola greeted the sudden coming of Angela, seemed to fall unnoted on her ears. Lola, her black eyes snapping and her lips compressed, glanced up at the white girl almost in fury. Natzie, paying no heed whatever to what was occurring about her, knelt breathless at her post, watching, eagerly watching. Then, slowly, they saw her raise her right hand, still cautiously holding the little mirror, face downward, and at sight of this the Apache boy could scarcely control his trembling, and Lola, turning about, spoke some furious words, in low, intense tone, that made him shrink back toward the screen. Then the wild girl glared again at Angela, as though the sight of her were unbearable, and, with as furious a gesture, sought to drive her, too, again to the refuge of the dark cleft, but Angela never stirred. Paying no heed to Lola, the daughter of the soldier gazed only at the daughter of the chief, at Natzie, whose hand was now level with the surface of the rock. The next instant, far to the northwest flashed a slender beam of dazzling light, another—another. An interval of a second or two, and still another flash. Angela could see the tiny, nebulous dot, like will-'o-the-wisp, dancing far over among the rocks across a gloomy gorge. She had never seen it before, but knew it at a glance. The Indian girl was signaling to some of her father's people far over toward the great reservation, and the tale she told was that danger menaced. Angela could not know that it told still more,—that danger menaced not only Natzie, daughter of one warrior chief, and the chosen of another now among their heroic dead—it threatened those whom she was pledged to protect, even against her own people.
Somewhere down that deep and frowning rift to the southwest, Indian guides were leading their brethren on the trail of these refugees among the upper rocks. Somewhere, far over among the uplands to the northwest, other tribesfolk, her own kith and kin, were lurking, and these the Indian girl was summoning with all speed to her aid.
And in the slant of that same glaring sunshine, not four miles away, toiling upward along a rocky slope, following the faint sign here and there of Apache moccasin, a little command of hardy, war-worn men had nearly reached the crest when their leader signaled backward to the long column of files, and, obedient to the excited gestures of the young Hualpai guide, climbed to his side and gazed intently over. What he saw on a lofty point of rocks, well away from the tortuous "breaks" through which they had made most of their wearying marches from the upper Beaver, brought the light of hope, the fire of battle, to his somber eyes. "Send Arnold up here," he shouted to the men below, and Arnold came, clambering past rock and bowlder until he reached the captain's side, took one look in the direction indicated, and brought his brown hand down with resounding swat on the butt of his rifle. "Treed 'em!" said he exultantly; then, with doubtful, backward glance along the crouching file of weary men, some sitting now and fanning with their broad-brimmed hats, he turned again to the captain and anxiously inquired: "Can we make it before dark?"
"We must make it!" simply answered Stout.
And then, far over among the heights between them and the reservation, there went suddenly aloft—one, two, three—compact little puffs of bluish smoke. Someone was answering signals
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